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How have the women in Hevra Kadisha’s unit been coping?
In the October 6 Magazine, we published a chillingly prescient three-page article on the holy and challenging work done by the IDF’s special Identification and Hevra Kadisha Women’s Unit, which operates under the Chief Rabbinate of the IDF. We interviewed Sharon Laufer, who recruited the women for the first three cohorts of this unit.
To recap: In the last 10 years, more women have entered combat units in the army, thus increasing the risk of more female casualties. Therefore, the IDF Rabbinate trained women volunteers to assist in the identification process and prepare for the burial of a female fallen soldier, who is called a halala. (A male is called a halal.) All volunteers had previous experience in their local burial societies (hevra kadiska).
This past July, the IDF Rabbinate decided to officially draft and categorize these women volunteers as soldiers serving in the reserves.
This week, we catch up with Laufer to learn what she and other women in the unit have been doing since October 7 and how they’ve been coping. They have been dealing with IDF (not civilian) casualties.When were you called up?
Saturday night, October 7. We knew something was happening during the day, so I turned on my phone and got a message that I needed to leave when Shabbat was over. I took one of the other women from Efrat with me. We got to Shura, the facility in Ramla where bodies of soldiers are housed while in the identification process. It was a very difficult sight. Some women had already been working during the day to start the identification process.
My amazingly strong group of women were waiting for the halalot (fallen female soldiers) with our gowns, gloves, and masks on as we stood in the doorway of our room, in the building that we know so well… the building that we have worked in and trained in.
Nothing prepared us for what came next. The halls were filled with stretcher after stretcher, on which the halalot were waiting to be received at the next station in their journey.
We worked through the night. I don’t even remember how many hours; I think it was a 12-hour shift, and we were on call for the next two weeks for 8- to 12-hour shifts every day. For me, it was from Saturday night through Thursday, and then I was off for Friday and Shabbat.
The following week, I was doing eight-hour shifts; and in the middle of the week, we started konenut (on-call) shifts from home. By Saturday night at the end of the first week, we had caught up with the quantity of halalot that were waiting to be identified.
The recommendation was that from Tuesday, October 17, we would have konenut from home, which meant that if I got a notification, I could leave my house in five minutes and get to the base in an hour.
We have several teams working on a shift basis. Each team stays with the same halala through the whole process from identification to burial preparation, unless the identification happened at the end of the day and went over into the next day. In that case, the team that was on the next shift did the burial preparation.
We were on 24/7 shifts, and the women from a similar unit up North started coming down the second week to relieve some of the women from the central part of the country. Once an identity was confirmed, the families were notified, and then we prepared the body for burial. It’s a process for each fallen soldier that takes time.
I prefer to be on the base rather than waiting at home to be called because, like everyone else, at least I feel like I’m doing something. And even when I’m sitting at home, there is always someone from my women’s team at the base who is ready to receive any halala that comes in.
Can you detail the process?
After reception has recorded their details, we escort the halalot to the next station in their journey at Shura. That will be the treatment room.
It is not like any other treatment room they [female soldiers] had been in before for a massage, a manicure, or a pedicure. We take care of every halala there, aware of each neshama (soul), but not in a way that any of us or they could have imagined.
In this situation, it is not like with a regular taharah [purification before burial] because when someone dies al kiddush Hashem [for being a Jew], there is no taharah. Everything with blood is buried with the body. We patch up the wounds with absorbent cotton, and then wrap them in the shrouds.
There are many wounds. We treat them as gently as we can. We feel our hearts touching theirs as we wrap them in a linen winding sheet. We then ask for mehila (forgiveness).
We also look for any personal effects or jewelry that may not have been noticed during the medical examination. These are precious treasures that we can give back to the family.
We prepare the wooden aron (coffin) that will carry each one to the next station on her journey. The smell of freshly sawed wood will never be the same for me. We lift and gently place each one in her aron and again ask for mehila.
For each one, we pray that our hands have done her life justice. We pray that her death not be in vain, and may her journey toward the light be without pain and may Hashem receive her sacrifice as an unfathomable kiddush Hashem (sanctification of God’s name) and may her neshama find peace.
I pray also, may our tears and our hearts be healed from bearing witness to their sacrifice.
What about self-care for yourselves and the psychological aspect?
When I’m home, I’m either writing in my journal or being creative in the kitchen.
On the base, each team has a debriefing at the end of each shift to discuss any problems or difficulties that occurred during that shift. Everyone recognizes the importance of the work being done, and we take care of one another. I’ve made it a point to call everyone on my shift to see how they’re doing.
Every day there is a mental health officer who checks in with us. Avigayil Bar-Asher, who has been the commander of the unit since 2016, calls us and even calls our spouses to see how they’re doing. We have had many sessions where we were able to speak about the most difficult situations we had dealt with, individually, over the last few weeks. We feel very supported.
During the first week, when I left home in the morning to drive to the base, I got into my car and it still smelled of death and decay from the day before. Each day at the end of my shift, I could still smell it in my hair, my clothing, my shoes. That was really hard because even after I got home, after taking a shower and having a full night’s sleep, I’d get back in the car the following morning and the smell was still there. I couldn’t shake that.
One day I had come home early and I was cooking dinner. I was frying an onion, and it had that same smell! I didn’t know if I could continue cooking. So I looked at the onion and I thought, ‘I’m cooking this for sustenance, and I need to let this association go away.’ And then, after a few deep breaths, I was able to cook and eat the onion. A few days later I cooked more onions and did not have that association.
It’s important to deal with these feelings immediately. When they rise within me, I don’t push them away; I look at them and I confront them and try to see multiple sides of what I’m looking at, with the knowledge of where it comes from – whether from anxiety or fear – and then I need to take it to a place of ‘Okay, I’m doing something healthy for myself or my family, and it’s not associated with this image of death in my consciousness.’
Did you experience a different kind of bonding during this time with your female colleagues?
The regular teams were on call the first week. During the second week, they started bringing in women who hadn’t yet been trained in the identification process, although they were experienced hevra kadisha people. If you’re on a team working with one of the halalot, of course you’re going to form a relationship with all the women on that team. There is definitely a stronger connection among all of us now.
This is a moment and a memory that we will share for the rest of our lives. And just as there is a camaraderie among the women on my team, it also exists with all the reserve soldiers on the base who are doing the same thing with the halalim [the bodies of fallen male soldiers]. There are haredim [ultra-Orthodox], secular, and religious individuals all working together. It’s quite an amazing sight and a true moment of unity.
The IDF have come to understand that they can rely on this group of exceptional women that is committed, able, and available to help in any way needed. They know they can call any hour of the day, and whoever is available says, “I will come.”
To each of my dear partners who do this work with me, I want to say thank you for giving me strength in those very difficult moments, thank you for letting me support you and for standing side by side as a team full of courage and dedication.
You are, each in your own way, women of iron, with hearts of gold and souls filled with light. ■
The writer is an award-winning journalist, director of Raise Your Spirits Theatre, Mikva the Musical, and the Na’na and Hamra Playback troupes, and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com.
IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi on Monday told the IAEA Board of Governors that he has corresponded with new Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and is hopeful that a near future meeting will lead to progress regarding the nuclear standoff.
At the same time, Grossi noted that since Pezeshkian’s inauguration on July 30, there has been no progress whatsoever with the Islamic Republic despite public statements some of its officials have made about trying to improve the situation with the West.
Grossi said, ” There has been no progress in the past 15 months towards implementing the Joint Statement of 4 March 2023,” in which Tehran had promised to start to fix a number of its nuclear violations and lack of cooperation with the UN nuclear watchdog.
Further, he said, “It has been more than three and a half years since Iran stopped implementing its nuclear-related commitments under the JCPOA, including provisionally applying its Additional Protocol, and therefore, it is also over three and a half years since the Agency was able to conduct complementary access in Iran.”“Consequently, the Agency has lost continuity of knowledge in relation to the production and inventory of centrifuges, rotors and bellows, heavy water and uranium ore concentrate,” stated Grossi.
Inconsistent Iranian statement
Moreover, the IAEA chief noted, “Iran says it has declared all nuclear material, activities and locations required under its NPT Safeguards Agreement. However, this statement is inconsistent with the Agency’s findings of uranium particles of anthropogenic origin at undeclared locations in Iran. The Agency needs to know the current location(s) of the nuclear material and/or of contaminated equipment involved.”
Grossi was referring to extensive evidence of Iranian nuclear violations, which Mossad exposed when it raided Tehran’s nuclear archives in 2018.
In addition, Grossi highlighted that the Islamic Republic continues to increase its 20% and 60% enriched uranium stock as well as the number of cascades it has for enriching uranium – all in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.
Every few months in recent years, the IAEA Board has met to confront the Iran nuclear issue, with it issuing a condemnation of Tehran in June of this year and in 2022, but to date, it has failed to refer the issue to the UN Security Council where global sanctions could potentially be “snapped back” on Iran.
Pezeshkian is viewed as more moderate than his predecessor, Ebrahim Raisi, and more moderate than the country’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but so far, there are no clear signs that he will have the power or be able to make the concessions to the West necessary to end the ongoing stalemate.
Some police officials have accused the IDF and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) of withholding security threat information overnight between October 6 and 7, which, if it had been shared with the police, could have saved the lives of 364 civilians who were killed at the Nova party and the 44 hostages who were taken.
First reported by Channel 12 at the end of the weekend, the Acting Police Commander for the Negev Area in the South Eyal Azulai is quoted as saying that the police had always been unsure about the safety of the Nova party attendees and that if they had known about the enhanced security threat, they might have ended the party before the invasion took place.
The warnings that Azulai was referring to led to at least two consultations among and between the Shin Bet and the IDF in the middle of the night between October 6 and 7.
It appears that an aspect of these warnings were IDF intelligence seeing somewhere between dozens to hundreds of Israeli SIM cellphone cards switching on within Gaza, something drawing suspicion of a potential attempted penetration into Israel since Israelis cannot safely reside in Gaza.The various warnings eventually led to a decisive conference call between IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi, Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar, and other senior IDF officials in which the Shin Bet decided to send a small additional crew of reinforcements to the border, and all of the security officials agreed to discuss the situation more the next day.
However, either because the security chiefs did not view the threat as terribly significant or because they did not want to widen the circle of intelligence sharing to the police, who they might have trusted less with such sensitive information, they did not even tell the police that anything problematic was afoot.
Asked to respond to the allegations, the IDF gave a generic non-denial denial, saying only that it is still probing the Nova party incident and that it will present its findings to the public when it concludes the probe.
However, given that the IDF had originally said it would publish the probe in June and then sometime over the course of July and August, IDF and police officials have been now regularly leaking findings from all of the different military probes in order to try to frame the public’s view of them before the official reports are issued.
In the past, certain IDF officials have tried to blame the police for allowing the Nova party to go forward in such a secure area and for reacting slowly to save the Nova party attendees, given that technically, it had more direct responsibility for their safety than for the many Gaza border towns which Hamas invaded and which were supposed to be protected by the IDF.
This latest leak places the onus on the IDF and the Shin Bet (which has been even more opaque than the IDF, not providing a single public update to date about its October 7 failures) for failing to warn the police of the increased danger they knew about overnight between October 6 and 7.
No Israeli official had any idea of the scale of Hamas’s invasion
Even though no one in the IDF or the Shin Bet had any idea of the scale of the size of the impending invasion, even a warning of a small penetration, which they were worried about, might have been enough to get the police to close the Nova party and evacuate the attendees.
Next, the Channel 12 report tries to compliment the police for evacuating a significant percentage of the Nova party attendees once Hamas’s invasion started, as well as for setting up a defense position on Route 232, which slowed Hamas’s advance against some of the attendees.
However, the report also said that then-Israel Police chief Kobi Shabtai did not even call Halevi for more help until 11:45 a.m., by which time it was already too late to save many of the Nova party residents.
Also, at that point, neither Halevi nor Shabtai made any bold moves to send a larger amount of reinforcement forces rapidly to the Nova party despite the fact that there were far more civilians there than in the many other locations that Hamas was invading.
As has become clear by a variety of IDF briefings, top IDF officials were either still in shock or lacked a clear picture of myriad places where Hamas had invaded and did not even assign field commanders to certain areas until around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. in the afternoon, and full reinforcement forces did not arrive in some places until even later.
By then, the entire police position at Route 232 had been overrun, and most Nova party civilians who had stayed near police were either killed or kidnapped.
There is an ongoing unresolved disagreement between the IDF and the police about which side had more doubts about holding the Nova party and which side was more negligent in allowing it to go forward in such a dangerous area so close to Gaza in the first place.
A variety of IDF officials have said they had not even been updated by other IDF officials that the party was taking place.
Yet, IDF Southern Command Chief of Staff Brig.-Gen. Manor Yanai had told Azulai that there was no security issue with the Nova party, and despite that statement, did not later update Azulai or any other police officials that the situation had changed, according to Channel 12.
The lack of updates to the police from ]IDF Southern Command would stand even more since IDF Southern Commander Maj.-Gen. Yaron Finkleman, Yanai’s boss, abandoned his vacation in northern Israel in the middle of the night to rush south to his base at Beersheba to have a closer hand on the situation.
Everyone wants the Mossad on their side when it comes to the debate over the Philadelphi Corridor.
The Jerusalem Post has reported multiple times since May that the unchanging position of the Mossad is that Israel can and should withdraw from the corridor if that would bring back between 18-30 hostages and provided Phase 1 of the hostage deal with Hamas would allow the IDF to return to attacking Hamas in the corridor after around 45 days.
The Post and other outlets have also reported that Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the IDF high command favor a deal under such terms, including temporarily withdrawing from the corridor to get some of the hostages back.
Yet on Sunday, an anonymous source who was present during the most recent diplomatic-security cabinet meeting leaked to the media that Mossad Director David Barnea supported Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position not to withdraw from the corridor.In fact, the anonymous source went even further saying that Barnea did not think Netanyahu should move toward Hamas on the issue “even one millimeter.”
Although… actually, that is not what the anonymous source said if the leaked statement is looked at carefully. Rather, it made a messy and hazy statement about Barnea supporting the Israeli position on the corridor to the extent that it would be acceptable to the US.Anyone who has followed the US position knows that it wishes Israel had stopped the war in December-January and for sure by May, and has tried everything it could to pressure Netanyahu to withdraw from the corridor.
Now, once the US said it could not get Netanyahu to completely withdraw from the corridor, it started to explore if it could get Hamas and Egypt to agree to a small Israeli presence in portions of the corridor, while otherwise generally withdrawing. That is not the same thing as thinking that Netanyahu’s stance on the corridor is the right move.The Mossad is in a somewhat similar position.
Mossad’s current position
There are some points where the Mossad’s position is tougher than the US position, but generally, since May, Barnea has been closer to the US, IDF, and Gallant’s view that it is time to cut a deal, even temporarily sacrificing control of the corridor, than he has been to Netanyahu’s staunch opposition to concessions in that area.
Also, usually, when the Mossad puts something out backing Netanyahu in negotiations, it is in its own name, not in the name of some anonymous cabinet official.The absence of a direct statement of support for Netanyahu from the Mossad itself is deafening.
So why is someone (from Netanyahu’s side) trying to pretend that the Mossad stands with the prime minister on this? Bodies of six hostages, who had been alive until last week, were just recovered.Netanyahu is under the greatest domestic pressure in Israel to compromise that he has been under possibly since the start of the war.
As he explains his position to the public, if he can claim that the defense establishment is split – IDF versus the Mossad – then he does not stand alone. His position looks principled and part of a serious strategy instead of about politics. Likewise, Gallant and the IDF want the Mossad on their side so they can present a united professionals’ front versus a political front. The truth is even without the Mossad, there is some principled opposition to cutting a deal if the question is saving the most Jewish lives on a long-term basis by ensuring Hamas is destroyed. But this also requires saying out loud that Netanyahu would be willing to let hostages die as a price to achieve that goal – because that is what happened this past week. Netanyahu is not ready to do this, so instead he would prefer if the battle can be about who supports who and a divide within the defense establishment.However, the more hostages die, there also becomes less incentive for a deal to save the shrinking total number of them still alive.
Whatever the Mossad’s view is, there is no question at this point that Netanyahu is the decider about the question of saving hostages versus keeping the corridor.
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